In the Senate in recent decades, the filibuster has morphed from the long-winded speeches portrayed by Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” into a silent but lethal tool that lets any one senator raise the threshold for passing bills from a simple majority (where the framers set it) to a supermajority of 60 votes.

The harsh reality is that when the dust settles on the chaos and violence that marked the end of the Trump presidency, Republican senators will have the same powerful incentives to deny Mr. Biden the 10 or so votes he will need, in addition to all 50 Democrats, to pass most bills in the Senate.

With Republicans needing just a handful of seats to take back majorities in the House and Senate, they will seek to make Democrats look feckless and ride voter discontent to gains in the 2022 midterms. In all but three times since 1914, the party that won the White House — in this case, the Democrats — loses House seats in the midterms. The next two years may be Mr. Biden’s best and perhaps only window to pass his agenda.

He can choose to avoid this fate, all while restoring the institution he spent 36 years in and empowering moderates. He and his fellow Senate Democrats can choose to reform the filibuster.

[snip]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/opinion/democrats-filibuster-congress-mcconnell.html

Interesting history of the filibuster & how it became Standard Operating Procedure.

At both of Obama's swearings-in (the first of which Roberts famously flubbed), he ended with a question, "So help you god?" Same just now for Biden.

Four long years ago, Roberts uttered the above line correctly, as a statement to be repeated, not as a question to be answered.

On 1/20/25 , before Biden (or Harris, if Joe decides not to run) takes the oath, s/he (or a spokesperson) should politely advise the CJ of the proper way to end the oath. (If he did that to me I would just throw the question right back at him, followed by, "Hey, I just repeated what you said, chief." )

Obama 2009


Obama 2013


Fatso 2017


Biden 2021

Jessica Campbell, who played Tammy Metzler in 'Election,' has died at the age of 38.

Campbell’s family confirmed the news to TMZ, stating that Campbell died on December 29th, 2020, in Portland, Oregon. Campbell, who left acting to become a naturopathic physician, spent the day seeing patients at her practice, her cousin Sarah Wessling told the outlet. She went home to visit with her mother and aunt, and went to the bathroom and never returned.

Her aunt later found her collapsed on the bathroom floor; Campbell was unable to be revived when the EMTs arrived. Her family is waiting for the results of the autopsy, which was conducted by the Multnomah County Medical Examiner in Oregon.

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/jessica-campbell-freaks-and-geeks-dead-obit-1113874/

Romney, Murkowski, Sasse, Toomey (maybe?), Collins (finally!)

Barring Trump turning into Yosemite Sam ("Yose-mite" as he would say) & running out to the front lawn with six-guns a-blazing, where do you think the additional 12 GOP votes needed to convict might come from?

Could there be a bandwagon effect, Mitch be damned?

wake up Rip Van Carson @ HUD & Rip Van Ross @ Commerce & tell them they'll be out of a job in 2 weeks?

Given their lethargy (Carson) & advanced age (Ross), I can't imagine that either will be shocked, & of course neither will have to worry about updating their resume or collecting unemployment.

Still, gently rousing them from their 4-year hibernation would be the decent thing to do before the movers arrive.

NPR remembers the Rev. Reginald Foster — perhaps the world's foremost Latin scholar. He was the official translator for four popes and inspired Roman tour guides for Latin enthusiasts worldwide.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/950886281/reginald-foster-worlds-renowned-latinist-dies-at-81

Here's the clip from Religulous. Quite a character!

Moscow (CNN) - A Russian agent sent to tail opposition leader Alexey Navalny has revealed how he was poisoned in August -- with the lethal nerve agent Novichok planted in his underpants.

The stunning disclosure from an agent who belonged to an elite toxins team in Russia's FSB security service came in a lengthy phone call following the unmasking of the unit by CNN and the online investigative outfit Bellingcat last week.

In what he was told was a debriefing [italics mine], Konstantin Kudryavtsev also talked about others involved in the poisoning in the Siberian city of Tomsk, and how he was sent to clean things up.

to tilting at them in his quixotic, traitorous, bird-brained, cuckoo coup attempt. Like all his other endeavors, it was a miserable failure.

To revise slightly Orwell's first line in Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It will be a bright cold day in January and the clocks will be striking twelve."* This time, however, the clocks will be marking not the continuation of a decades-long dictatorship, but the end of a four-year attempt to create one.

*Original line: "It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen."

For all his lies & failures of omission & commission (too many to recount; not the purpose of this post), George W. Bush handled the transition to the Obama administration in the same smooth, time-honored manner as his father (who had been defeated) & all his predecessors (as far as I'm aware). To be sure, W. presided over a failed presidency (and how!), but he doesn't deserve to be called a disgraced former president.

Trump, by acting exactly in defeat as most (all?) DUers & others predicted -- & we're still in the early stages, oy -- has earned himself the adjective forever applied to so many politicians who resigned for criminal or ethical breaches: Disgraced.

If Anthony Weiner, e.g., will always be known as "disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner," Donald Trump should suffer the same fate.

Will it happen? Not in the current boiling cauldron, but farther along, I believe history will regard 45 as "disgraced."

I don't think Trump's going to pardon anyone (besides himself, which will fail) before leaving office, whenever that might occur between now & Jan. 20. Not even the 2 Thanksgiving turkeys.